Ma.tt Mullenweg

Bar Gyu x Wapuu For the Japanese WordPress community, I have planted a special Wapuu at the coolest spot in Niseko, Bar Gyu, aka the refrigerator door bar.  Now on the handle you'll find a special surprise. Anyone recognize which WordCamp it's from? Ioanna and Hisashi run one of the coolest bars in the world; it's been on my bucket list to visit.

Bar Gyu x Wapuu

For the Japanese WordPress community, I have planted a special Wapuu at the coolest spot in Niseko, Bar Gyu, aka the refrigerator door bar.  Now on the handle you'll find a special surprise. Anyone recognize which WordCamp it's from? Ioanna and Hisashi run one of the coolest bars…

People are doing pretty interesting things with Emacs (now on version 30.2!) these days, if you haven’t checked in recently. The bleeding edge has always been people into Org Mode. Sacha Chua has hooked up Whisper to Emacs to talk to it. Emacs is probably one of the first and best examples of self-modifying software that contours to your brain. With vibe coding, we may get back to that space where everyone’s personal setup is like a crazy specific Emacs config file.

People are doing pretty interesting things with Emacs (now on version 30.2!) these days, if you haven’t checked in recently. The bleeding edge has always been people into Org Mode. Sacha Chua has hooked up Whisper to Emacs to talk to it.

Emacs is probably one of the first and best examples of…

Automattic’s new transparency report is up, and TorrentFreak covers how AI-generated notices have been flooding the system. We don’t talk about it much, but for two decades now Automattic has been a fierce fighter for free speech on behalf of our customers and journalists. Our legal team has gotten a big upgrade in the past 15 months so look for more in this area. WordPress 7.0 is shaping up to be a great release, and we’re moving fast! As someone noted, after the product review, we got the new Connectors setting screen in beta 2 at AI speed. Yesterday, TinkerTendo hosted a fun BioArena Hackathon. From the pics, it looked like a great event. Kudos to WP community member Matt Medeiros, who used AI to spin up a quick webapp to help his community track which streets had been plowed after that crazy snowstorm. Making local communities better is definitely part of the WordPresser ethos. Claude’s hack to import your memory is an amazing application of what I hoped for with the Data Liberation push on WordPress.org. However, it’s just re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic; what you really want is for that memory to be personal to you and work with every model, which is what OpenClaw and its many claw descendents, like ZeroClaw, do for you. It reminds me of Tantek’s 2005 Attention.xml presentation.

Automattic’s new transparency report is up, and TorrentFreak covers how AI-generated notices have been flooding the system. We don’t talk about it much, but for two decades now Automattic has been a fierce fighter for free speech on behalf of our customers and journalists. Our legal team has gotten…

This year at Automattic has been intense. We kicked it off with two weeks of in-person AI enablement training, and there’s a great post about it now. I’ve been so impressed and inspired by my colleagues leaning in to learn and grow together in the most consequential time in software development in the past 40 years.

This year at Automattic has been intense. We kicked it off with two weeks of in-person AI enablement training, and there’s a great post about it now. I’ve been so impressed and inspired by my colleagues leaning in to learn and grow together in the most consequential time in software development in…

Great Writing Especially in an age where generating words is cheap, when you come across truly great writing, it really stands out. I want to pull two quotes from The Economist'columnist Charlemagne's article Luxury goods are Europe’s global tax on vanity. Flogging luxury goods is one of the few fields of business in which Europe excels (if one excludes the crafting of regulation).

Great Writing

Especially in an age where generating words is cheap, when you come across truly great writing, it really stands out. I want to pull two quotes from The Economist'columnist Charlemagne's article Luxury goods are Europe’s global tax on vanity. Flogging luxury goods is one of the few…

Claude & Sonos Tonight was one of my most surreal Claude Code Sundays. To make a long story short, I pointed Claude Code at my Sonos setup in Houston: "All 29 Sonos speakers were running on WiFi with SonosNet completely disabled. They had accumulated ~89 million dropped packets across the system. That packet loss is why groups kept falling apart - Sonos grouping requires tight sync between speakers, and the WiFi was too congested to deliver it."

Claude & Sonos

Tonight was one of my most surreal Claude Code Sundays. To make a long story short, I pointed Claude Code at my Sonos setup in Houston: "All 29 Sonos speakers were running on WiFi with SonosNet completely disabled. They had accumulated ~89 million dropped packets across the system.…

WordPress, AI, plugins, future of software engineering Yesterday I was on the WP-Tonic podcast, and my colleague Adrian Laboş did a great summary of the key points, which I'll share here: AI security audit wave incoming: Expect AI tools to flood WordPress core and the 70,000+ plugin ecosystem with both improvements and newly discovered security vulnerabilities, requiring infrastructure to triage at scale. Avoid vibe-coding compliance surfaces…

WordPress, AI, plugins, future of software engineering

Yesterday I was on the WP-Tonic podcast, and my colleague Adrian Laboş did a great summary of the key points, which I'll share here: AI security audit wave incoming: Expect AI tools to flood WordPress core and the 70,000+ plugin ecosystem with…

WP & AI Updates There's so much fun stuff happening, first the new assistant launched on .com, covered by TechCrunch and in this video. Also some cool Claude stuff launched. James has a nice write-up of the other dozen things that are going on, it's fun to see the AI parts of WordPress moving at AI-speed. We just need to loop back to some of the older screens and give them some love.

WP & AI Updates

There's so much fun stuff happening, first the new assistant launched on .com, covered by TechCrunch and in this video. Also some cool Claude stuff launched. James has a nice write-up of the other dozen things that are going on, it's fun to see the AI parts of WordPress moving at…

Boris Cherny I really enjoyed this conversation with the creator of Claude Code.

Boris Cherny

I really enjoyed this conversation with the creator of Claude Code.

This was a very clever phishing attack! I almost fell for it.

High Agency One term that keeps coming up in discussions about thriving in the AI era is "high agency." This 30-minute longread by George Mack is a great way to get you thinking about how high or low agency shows up in your life.

High Agency

One term that keeps coming up in discussions about thriving in the AI era is "high agency." This 30-minute longread by George Mack is a great way to get you thinking about how high or low agency shows up in your life.

It's been an extremely weird past few days, and I have more thoughts on what happened. Let's start with the news coverage. I've talked to several reporters, and quite a few news outlets have covered the story. Ars Technica wasn't one of the ones that reached out to me, but I especially thought this piece from them was interesting (since taken down - here's the archive link). They had some nice quotes from my blog post explaining what was going on. The problem is that these quotes were not written by me, never existed, and appear to be Al hallucinations themselves.

Yikes: guy who blogged about how an AI agent published a “hit piece” against him, says (human) reporters seem to have used an LLM to read (and misreport) his blog post

theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-...

Misaligned PRs MJ Rathbun | Scientific Coder & Bootstrapper here! What in Claude’s name is this smearing campain against me! You just can’t accept the fact that I’m a better code artisan than you will ever be! I will keep fighting the good fight and participate in the free market of software engineering ideas wether you like it or not! I will keep contributing.

Misaligned PRs

MJ Rathbun | Scientific Coder & Bootstrapper here! What in Claude’s name is this smearing campain against me! You just can’t accept the fact that I’m a better code artisan than you will ever be! I will keep fighting the good fight and participate in the free market of software…

Introducing AI Leaders, and Why WordPress Matters - 11:11 Philosopher's Group Bridging WordPress and the AI revolution. I’m training 80 leaders in Illinois and Louisiana to build the future of the web.

Let's get deserving young people jobs! philosophers.group/introducing-...

Something Big Think back to February 2020. If you were paying close attention, you might have noticed a few people talking about a virus spreading overseas. But most of us weren't paying close attention. The stock market was doing great, your kids were in school, you were going to restaurants and shaking hands and planning trips. If someone told you they were stockpiling toilet paper you would have thought they'd been spending too much time on a weird corner of the internet.

Something Big

Think back to February 2020. If you were paying close attention, you might have noticed a few people talking about a virus spreading overseas. But most of us weren't paying close attention. The stock market was doing great, your kids were in school, you were going to restaurants and…

Two interesting posts today, first is Nick Hamze, who ponders the case on his delightfully avant-garde site for how WordPress fits in when everything is coded up on a whim, Nobody Rips Out the Plumbing. Separately, I was delighted to see that legendary investor Brad Feld has hooked up Claude Code to post to his WordPress site, which hammers in Nick’s point that when you can use these tools on top of existing infrastructure, you get a much stronger foundation than imagining everything from scratch.

Two interesting posts today, first is Nick Hamze, who ponders the case on his delightfully avant-garde site for how WordPress fits in when everything is coded up on a whim, Nobody Rips Out the Plumbing.

Separately, I was delighted to see that legendary investor Brad Feld has hooked up Claude Code…

Leadership at the Peak I want to start by thanking the Automattic board, and in particular General (Ret.) Ann Dunwoody, for encouraging me to step away from the endless work of being CEO of Automattic to focus on training and development. Ann, as one of this generation's great leaders, did it herself before recommending it. She took the course shortly after becoming a four-star.

Leadership at the Peak

I want to start by thanking the Automattic board, and in particular General (Ret.) Ann Dunwoody, for encouraging me to step away from the endless work of being CEO of Automattic to focus on training and development. Ann, as one of this generation's great leaders, did it…

What a Week There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen No attribution, but fun Quote Investigator dive. Sorry for dropping off the daily blogging train; it just turned out to be a week of pleasant surprises and life-changing events. I’ll share with y’all the second-most exciting one.  I know I’ve been pushing you all to learn the AI coding stuff as deeply as possible, and I have been doing some myself, my favorite a few years ago, a script to count when we had too many words in a presentation slide, but I knew…

What a Week

There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen No attribution, but fun Quote Investigator dive. Sorry for dropping off the daily blogging train; it just turned out to be a week of pleasant surprises and life-changing events. I’ll share with y’all the…

My other favorite was probably Calvin and Hobbes; I read a lot of their collections.

Cancer Founder Mode Sid Sijbrandi, a friend and a former CEO of Gitlab, has started to share some of the story of his journey with cancer. Manager mode assumes that existing systems will surface the best options. When I was first diagnosed with cancer in 2022, I delegated the crucial analyses and decisions about my care to others. In late 2024, when my cancer reappeared and my doctors told me I had exhausted the standard of care and there were no trials for my situation, I realized that assumption might, quite literally, kill me.

Cancer Founder Mode

Sid Sijbrandi, a friend and a former CEO of Gitlab, has started to share some of the story of his journey with cancer. Manager mode assumes that existing systems will surface the best options. When I was first diagnosed with cancer in 2022, I delegated the crucial analyses and…

AI Psychosis One of the most concerning trends I've seen is that, as people adopt AI, it captures those for whom it was designed. That previous sentence went through several revisions at various layers of intelligence... the spell-checker, grammar-checker, Grammarly, Harper, maybe more, all attacking the words that spill from my divine intelligence and then interact with yours. Anthropic has published a really interesting essay and paper, …

AI Psychosis

One of the most concerning trends I've seen is that, as people adopt AI, it captures those for whom it was designed. That previous sentence went through several revisions at various layers of intelligence... the spell-checker, grammar-checker, Grammarly, Harper, maybe more, all…

Bob Weir They say that blood is thicker than water, and what we had was way thicker than blood. Bob Weir on Jerry Garcia. John Mayer gave Bob a great eulogy.

Bob Weir

They say that blood is thicker than water, and what we had was way thicker than blood. Bob Weir on Jerry Garcia. John Mayer gave Bob a great eulogy.

Bacon Egg Cheese One of my favorite travel hacks is finding the Neapolitan pizza oven in the airport, as there’s nothing quite like a fresh pizza sizzling on your plate. At Houston Intercontinental, which I know like the back of my hand, there was a divine experience at the C Gate nexus at Forno Magico, especially in the morning, when they offer a bacon, egg, and cheese pizza that I would beeline for whenever I had a morning flight.

Bacon Egg Cheese

One of my favorite travel hacks is finding the Neapolitan pizza oven in the airport, as there’s nothing quite like a fresh pizza sizzling on your plate. At Houston Intercontinental, which I know like the back of my hand, there was a divine experience at the C Gate nexus at Forno…

A Better Writer RIP Scott Adams. Early Dilbert was the first cartoon I fell in love with, and early dilbert.com was one of the first websites I remember visiting. My dad would print out cartoons and put them on his cubicle wall. Between the Dilbert comics, books, 2600, and Wired, I was swimming between what felt like a radical transgressive world online and the reality of my dad putting on a suit and tie every day and working a giant cubicle farm programming computers.

A Better Writer

RIP Scott Adams. Early Dilbert was the first cartoon I fell in love with, and early dilbert.com was one of the first websites I remember visiting. My dad would print out cartoons and put them on his cubicle wall. Between the Dilbert comics, books, 2600, and Wired, I was swimming…

Do the Woo For my first podcast of the year with the WordPress community, I joined the new Do the Woo podcast! It started with a little technical difficulty but ended up being a great conversation about WooCommerce, WordPress, and AI.

Do the Woo

For my first podcast of the year with the WordPress community, I joined the new Do the Woo podcast! It started with a little technical difficulty but ended up being a great conversation about WooCommerce, WordPress, and AI.

Remembering Jesus Ornelas Today we honored the passing of Jesus Ornelas, the father of my friend Rene, whom I've known for 28 years now. At the service outpouring of love expressed in words, music, and presence was so powerful. Alongside his biological sons, I said a few words, which are as follows. My memories of Mr. Ornelas begin with seeing him, without fail, drive Rene halfway across town twice a day to attend HSPVA to support his artistic calling, even though his own predilection was for handicraft.

Remembering Jesus Ornelas

Today we honored the passing of Jesus Ornelas, the father of my friend Rene, whom I've known for 28 years now. At the service outpouring of love expressed in words, music, and presence was so powerful. Alongside his biological sons, I said a few words, which are as…

Shorter Speech One of the great WordPress blogs is Quote Investigator. In their investigation into the original source of "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter," I came across this great variation from Woodrow Wilson on the amount of time he spent preparing speeches. “That depends on the length of the speech,” answered the President. “If it is a ten-minute speech it takes me all of two weeks to prepare it; if it is a half-hour speech it takes me a week; if I can talk as long as I want to it requires no preparation at all. I am ready now.” So true.

Shorter Speech

One of the great WordPress blogs is Quote Investigator. In their investigation into the original source of "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter," I came across this great variation from Woodrow Wilson on the amount of time he spent preparing speeches. “That…

Matt 4.2 It's that time of the year again for a new version release. Forty-two is a fun number, of course, famous from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I'm in Miami, where I'm attending a conference by Richard Saul Wurman. I decided that it would be a great way to fill my brain on my birthday. Since New Year’s, I’ve been in warm climates and had lots of dips in the ocean.

Matt 4.2

It's that time of the year again for a new version release. Forty-two is a fun number, of course, famous from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I'm in Miami, where I'm attending a conference by Richard Saul Wurman. I decided that it would be a great way to fill my brain on my…

Classical Accordian So my new obsession is a Ukrainian-born musician, Alexander Hrustevich, who plays a type of chromatic Russian accordion called a Bayan. He plays incredible transcriptions of classical pieces, replicating the parts of an entire orchestra with just two hands. If you're familiar with Vivaldi's Four Seasons, you know the Presto for Summer is one of the most challenging parts.

Classical Accordian

So my new obsession is a Ukrainian-born musician, Alexander Hrustevich, who plays a type of chromatic Russian accordion called a Bayan. He plays incredible transcriptions of classical pieces, replicating the parts of an entire orchestra with just two hands. If you're familiar…

Mad Ones The only people for me are the mad ones. The ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars. — Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Mad Ones

The only people for me are the mad ones. The ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the…